He had another anecdote which he was very
apt to give, by way of a rebuke, when the Major wearied us beyond
endurance with dispraises of the English. This was an account of
the braves gens with whom he had been boarding. True enough, he
was a man so simple and grateful by nature, that the most common
civilities were able to touch him to the heart, and would remain
written in his memory; but from a thousand inconsiderable but
conclusive indications, I gathered that this family had really
loved him, and loaded him with kindness. They made a fire in his
bedroom, which the sons and daughters tended with their own hands;
letters from France were looked for with scarce more eagerness by
himself than by these alien sympathisers; when they came, he would
read them aloud in the parlour to the assembled family, translating
as he went. The Colonel's English was elementary; his daughter not
in the least likely to be an amusing correspondent; and, as I
conceived these scenes in the parlour, I felt sure the interest
centred in the Colonel himself, and I thought I could feel in my
own heart that mixture of the ridiculous and the pathetic, the
contest of tears and laughter, which must have shaken the bosoms of
the family. Their kindness had continued till the end. It appears
they were privy to his flight, the camlet cloak had been lined
expressly for him, and he was the bearer of a letter from the
daughter of the house to his own daughter in Paris. The last
evening, when the time came to say good-night, it was tacitly known
to all that they were to look upon his face no more. He rose,
pleading fatigue, and turned to the daughter, who had been his
chief ally: 'You will permit me, my dear--to an old and very
unhappy soldier--and may God bless you for your goodness!' The
girl threw her arms about his neck and sobbed upon his bosom; the
lady of the house burst into tears; 'et je vous le jure, le pere se
mouchait!' quoth the Colonel, twisting his moustaches with a
cavalry air, and at the same time blinking the water from his eyes
at the mere recollection.

It was a good thought to me that he had found these friends in
captivity; that he had started on this fatal journey from so
cordial a farewell. He had broken his parole for his daughter:
that he should ever live to reach her sick-bed, that he could
continue to endure to an end the hardships, the crushing fatigue,
the savage cold, of our pilgrimage, I had early ceased to hope. I
did for him what I was able,--nursed him, kept him covered, watched
over his slumbers, sometimes held him in my arms at the rough
places of the road. 'Champdivers,' he once said, 'you are like a
son to me--like a son.' It is good to remember, though at the time
it put me on the rack. All was to no purpose. Fast as we were
travelling towards France, he was travelling faster still to
another destination. Daily he grew weaker and more indifferent.
An old rustic accent of Lower Normandy reappeared in his speech,
from which it had long been banished, and grew stronger; old words
of the patois, too: Ouistreham, matrasse, and others, the sense of
which we were sometimes unable to guess. On the very last day he
began again his eternal story of the cross and the Emperor. The
Major, who was particularly ill, or at least particularly cross,
uttered some angry words of protest. 'Pardonnez-moi, monsieur le
commandant, mais c'est pour monsieur,' said the Colonel: 'Monsieur
has not yet heard the circumstance, and is good enough to feel an
interest.' Presently after, however, he began to lose the thread
of his narrative; and at last: 'Que que j'ai? Je m'embrouille!'
says he, 'Suffit: s'm'a la donne, et Berthe en etait bien
contente.' It struck me as the falling of the curtain or the
closing of the sepulchre doors.

Sure enough, in but a little while after, he fell into a sleep as
gentle as an infant's, which insensibly changed into the sleep of
death. I had my arm about his body at the time and remarked
nothing, unless it were that he once stretched himself a little, so
kindly the end came to that disastrous life.